I decided to start with the anchor piece of the layout, the river. I went with a SNOT 1x2 brick technique, underlaid with blue and white plates to give the appearance of varying depths, and gave the river a bit of a meandering curve. I'll frame the edges with white wedge plates to give the appearance of a snow-covered riverbank.

The overall layout will be 96 studs deep by 176 studs wide. The entire MOC will split into two parts, just to the right of the river, in order to make it easier to transport. You can see the technic pin connection assembly in the pic above. I'll probably have a few bricks/plates on hand at the convention to attach the two parts together from the top as well. This will help to eliminate any visible seam.

I have been really busy on weekends, but have been trying to get an hour or two of building done after work when I can. I'm painfully meticulous as a builder, so I don't make as much progress as I'd like to, especially with the build windows broken up into such short increments, but I'm pretty happy with what I have so far. Was really counting on having a bunch of 16x16 white plates from my LUG order to help cover ground with, but those haven't arrived yet, so I've been trying to use other colored plates under the rock cliffs as much as possible, in order to conserve what white I have.

I'm a little concerned about the transition from the cliffs to the "sea level" elevation at the edges, where I'll meet up with my fellow contributors, but I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Here you can see that I've been able to hide the seam between the two halves pretty well. We'll see how it looks once it's on a tablecloth and uneven tables at the Con. I might get a large piece of plywood and a white sheet to use for the entire collaboration to sit on, to eliminate the unevenness problem.September 6 - Waterfall!

Another busy weekend, but I managed to get a solid build session done on Monday, thanks to the Labor Day holiday, finishing the waterfall and making serious progress on the rock work and elevated portion of the build. Having my 16x16 plates show up was a huge boon, allowing me to crank out a lot of flat snowscape in a hurry, and also to conserve my smaller plates for other more delicate applications.

In the far right corner, you can see the start of how I plan to ramp down to "sea level" from the elevated section. Basically a LOT of stacked plates to create a gentle slope. On the left side of the build, I have a lot less space, so might end up doing more of a stepped approach, with the actual pathway being the only part that's gently sloped with plates.

The waterfall turned out pretty good, I think. I tried to vary the way that I stacked the trans 1x2 plates, so that they were at different "depths" from the face of the falls. I think this resulted in a pretty good effect. About as natural as one can get when trying to build water using rectangles, haha.September 8 - Mountain Cave

I ended up skipping the gym the last couple of days so that I could get some more work done on this. I ended up building a cave for the river to come out of, and I think it turned out pretty good! Definitely looks less abrupt than it did before up there. Added some icicles and a bat for fun details.

I also got more rocks built on both sides of the river, and will continue building the mountain up a bit more above the river. Hoping to get the entire base-landscape done this week so that I can start on the castle and other details like trees and snowscaping, though I've got some activities Fri/Sat/Sun (including a sort party for LUGBulk), so we will see how that goes. I also need to get to the gym at least a couple of times!

Next update will probably be after the basic landscape is completed. Please feel free to offer suggestions on how I might finish out the rest of the stonework in the comments below!October 3 - BrickCon Debut!

"Havenhill Manor" debuted at BrickCon this weekend, along with Bigger Jim's contribution to the collaboration.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the layout, despite rushing a bit on some parts (the castle, for example), in an effort to meet the convention deadline.I'll plan on re-staging everything and taking some "official" photos in the coming days (weeks, haha), once I've recovered from Lego overload. More photos of the layout at BrickCon can be found in my Flickr Album, HERE

I'll post final pics in the "completed builds" section of the forum. Thanks for following along!Feedback in the comments below is always welcome!

Post by AK_Brickster on Sept 8, 2016 8:38:02 GMT -8

Well, I'm not the tidiest either, but I force myself to do a quick clean-up at the end of each session just so things don't get too out of hand. It helps to have a dedicated LEGO room, as I have a small folding table off to the side where I can stage my bins of "raw materials".

New update posted. I look forward to seeing what you think of the cave!

Post by AK_Brickster on Sept 15, 2016 11:41:53 GMT -8

I've made quite a bit more progress on the landscape and hope to have it done this weekend. I have a friend coming over to help tonight, so should be at a point where I can take another progress pic tonight or tomorrow.

Post by AK_Brickster on Dec 29, 2016 8:27:49 GMT -8

I've sufficiently recovered from BrickCon that I'm starting to get the building bug again. I'm hoping to get my room organized maybe this weekend or next and then continue to work on this layout. The "castle" that I built for BrickCon was very hastily thrown together, as was most of the landscaping, so I'll be working to improve both of those in the next phase of construction.